Sugar!

Miss Green delivered a very timely reminder in our Assembly today about the good food choices we need to make throughout our day. She revealed to us the quite shocking amount of ‘hidden, added’ sugar that is often found in a number of common food and drinks and whilst this is acceptable in moderation, we must take care it does not add up to more than our suggested daily allowance. For a 4-6 year old only 5 lumps of sugar (19g) is necessary and this only marginally increases as children get slightly older, meaning that 7-10 year olds only should consume 6 lumps (24g); when we learnt an average slice of bread contains 3 lumps of sugar it was suddenly all too clear how we can easily exceed the guidelines and threaten our health. Of course naturally occurring sugar found in fruit and vegetables remains a part of our balanced, healthy diet and even some added sugar and fat is beneficial in moderation. Lots of information can be found here http://www.nhs.uk/change4life-beta/food-facts/sugar

Parents can be reassured by our highly skilled and experienced kitchen team, who plan and prepare the girls’ fresh lunch, both hot and cold elements, on a daily basis, and to rigorous standards to comply with guidelines about healthy eating in schools. The menus are always available on the website in order to allow you to discuss food choices with your daughter in advance – do take a look – if for example, “jelly” is listed as a pudding, it is a sugar-free version to be enjoyed. If you have any further lunch queries please do get in touch with school.

At the recent Forms Reps meeting it was proposed that from now on there would be no generous offerings of cakes, donuts or cookies in recognition of a girl celebrating her birthday in school. Whilst we all undoubtedly crave sugar and enjoy sweet treats, they were becoming something of a regular occurrence in class and only led to mood highs and energy slumps afterwards which are not conducive to being the best you can be and building better learners. Class teachers have agreed to celebrate each girls’ birthday in class in a special and unique, age appropriate way to them (so watch out for the ‘birthday hat’ or hot seat, decorated chair…!) We kindly thank parents in advance for their support of this initiative and appreciate treats can be better regulated at home and on the weekends.